I’m writing this on a flight from Newark to London. I was
meant to be on a flight from Washington to London yesterday. Except, United
Airlines. This isn’t the story of my delay, my frantic and ultimately futile cab
ride across North Carolina, or even my discovery that the United Airlines full tagline is “Fly the Friendly Skies…
‘cause the ground staff are just plain rude”. For that saga, maybe visit my Facebook
page where you can see updates of my excursions to various East Coast airports
while my mum comments in bewilderment, my husband attempts to keep me chipper
and my boss uses social media to inform me he won’t be approving my expenses…
I digress. I was in the US as part of a global project. A
big, bold, multi-cultural transformation project with huge potential to
revolutionise the organisation I work in. Exciting in itself, right? But also
exciting because of the diversity of our fabulous team – East Coast, West Coast,
Mid-West and Southern Americans. Canadians, Brits, French and a token South
African. We spent the week helicoptering between big hairy questions like “how
the hell do we paint the picture of this change to our senior
leadership in a way that inspires without terrifying them?” and diverting down
hour long rabbit holes attempting to we find the one word that describes
temporary workers in both US English and UK English (or, ‘proper English’ as I
like to call it). And then translating it into French, and figuring out if it
will work in Mexico… Or why, even though the Queen is indeed Elizabeth II, it’s
not exactly the same principle as say Billy Ray Gilbert III, and so there
really isn’t a huge need for the suffix field in the new HR system for us
limeys.
Communication. You can carefully and eloquently say exactly
what you mean and other people are just guaranteed to have something else
entirely in mind. Eventually we conceded
that we probably need to explore a ‘language pack’ for UK English on the system we were
designing, and we would include the suffix field just in case we ever did hire
bona fide royalty in the UK (or Billy Ray takes advantage of our to-be-harmonised
relocation policy).
While these discombobulating debates were taking place my
phone pinged. My best friend, 4,000 miles away on messenger. Could I recommend
a good book on Coaching, as she thought her company should start doing it
properly?
It is a measure of how much you are loved that, when you ask
someone who took over a year of their life, hundreds of hours of CPD and ten
hours of assessment to gain an international accreditation in something if you
could buy a single book to do that same thing, they don’t send you the middle finger emoji in response (there is a middle finger emoji, right?), but reply
with “What do you mean by ‘Coaching’?”.
Yes, Coaching 101 – answer a question with a question. I
like the ‘what do you mean by…?’ question. It saves you both chasing down
multiple rabbit holes only to find, when you finally emerge blinking on the
surface, that you were in fact in different warrens all along.
We were in different warrens. My much loved bestie wanted to
train people in presentation skills. A valuable, noble endeavour. But about as
much like Coaching as Lipton’s with UHT half-and-half is like a well-brewed Tetley
and a splash of semi-skimmed. So I attempted, in between heated debates over
whether people could be trusted not to upload pictures of their privates to the
social enterprise platform (yes, that well-worn HR fire starter), to describe
the difference between coaching, mentoring and training in instant messenger.
Not so easy. Mentoring – pretty straight forward. Someone
who has trodden that path before, imparting the wisdom of their experience to
someone hoping to tread a similar path. Training: see Teaching. Coaching. How
to describe it? I think I finally went with something really pretentious like ‘facilitated
learning or discovery, without direction or judgement, designed to enable
someone to identify and reach their own self-defined goals’. Bloody hell. No
wonder even a Psychology graduate from a top 5 university doesn’t know what it
is.
And that bothered me. I can really easily articulate what it
isn’t. It isn’t telling or directing. It isn’t giving guidance. It is the
absence of judgement and ego. It isn’t mentoring. It isn’t training. It isn’t a
subject matter expert imparting their own experience, however valuable or
revered. It isn’t gurus or experts. It’s not about the coach at all. Ever. It
isn’t Jose Mourinho. It isn’t Sir Clive Woodward. It isn’t talking. It isn’t
expounding. It isn’t about ‘fixing’.
Coaching is all about the other person. The ‘coachee’, the ‘client’,
the ‘subject’ (I don’t like these words – can we have another? How about the ‘hero’
because it’s about making someone the hero of their own story, not a character
in yours). It is about creating a place – physical or metaphorical – for them
to really stand back, walk around and explore themselves. Not in a therapy or
counselling way - Coaching is not an answer to serious psychological needs. But
in a way that means someone has a completely clean place to treat the contents
of their head and heart like an afternoon at the Tate Modern – exploring,
playing, questioning, ambling about and looking at stuff from
different angles. Learning without direction or preconception. Unearthing
profundity, hilarity and clarity.
Still too pretentious? How about this.
Coaching is Mr
Miyagi. A place for Daniel – the hero - to
be safe, but not coddled. No easy answers, no direction, no posturing. Some
tough love, some nurturing. Always with an absolute unwavering belief that,
while our hero is human and fallible, he also has within him the ability and
reserves to achieve whatever he puts his mind to.
Or, for those of you born after 1985, it is Professor Snape.
Driven, ultimately, for good and by love. Acting in absolute service of the
hero of that story. A lightness of touch and lack of ego that means it isn’t until
way down the line that we, or the hero, even realise the coaching took place. Creating
safety from a distance in a way that never screams ‘look at me’ but that means our hero creates their own sanctuary and power without even realising there was
a helping hand there when needed. Standing by with rare protective magic when the
hero takes themselves into uncharted waters. Provoking, challenging, unlocking.
But quietly, behind the scenes. Not for credit, or glory but for the love of
it. Shrouded in unintentional but occasionally necessary mystery. A little of a dark art but infused with out-and-out
pure intention. And, often, rather sadly, misunderstood. Assumed to be the complete opposite of what it actually is.
Yes. That’ll do. For now. Coaching is Professor Snape. Does
that help, W?
Comments
Post a Comment